Numerous electronic systems operated by the Internal Revenue Service went down Tuesday as Americans scrambled to submit their taxes.
According to IRS Acting Commissioner David J. Kautter, several systems, including the one used by Americans to submit their returns online, went down just hours before the midnight deadline.
“On my way over here this morning, I was told a number of systems are down at the moment,” Kautter told lawmakers Tuesday morning. “We are working to resolve the issue and taxpayers should continue to file as they normally would.”
The Washington Post reports, citing an anonymous congressional official, that the agency will attempt a “hard reboot” in order to fix the problem.
Kautter added that taxpayers would not be penalized for the issue.
“If we can’t solve it today we’ll figure out a solution,” Kautter said. “Taxpayers would not be penalized because of a technical problem the IRS is having.”
Part of the IRS “Direct Pay” option, which allows taxpayers to send funds to the agency, was also down Tuesday.
A screenshot from the IRS website shows that those seeking to pay by bank account are currently unable to do so.
Americans still have other options to pay their taxes but will incur a fee in order to do so.
The New York State Tax Department also stated on Twitter Tuesday that it too was experiencing technical difficulties, although the issue was fixed hours later.
“The Personal Income Tax Extension web app is currently experiencing intermittent system issues. We’re working to restore access quickly,” the tweet said. “Please try again later. Note: if you file & pay your extension by midnight, we’ll consider it to be timely. We apologize for the inconvenience.”
Despite the problem, Tuesday still remains the last day for taxpayers to file their returns and pay any money owed to the federal government.
The IRS has yet to comment on the source of the technical issue.
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